Florum et coronariarum historia

DEDICATORY EPISTLE ##

...differing greatly from Origanum Onitis original: "Origano Onitide" — a variety of oregano or marjoram mentioned by ancient authorities like Dioscorides and Galen. And into such errors physicians are led by ignorance of plants stirpium: the stocks, stems, or the plants themselves and medical materials materia medica: the study of the origin, properties, and use of drugs, as well as the neglect of that part of the art which alone deserves to be called by the name of Medicine: namely, the reasoning and method of curing diseases.

For it cannot happen that a physician who is learned, well-versed, and practiced in the works of the art would fall into errors of this kind. Indeed, he will hold exactly to the dose dosim: the specific quantity of a medicine to be administered and the proper weight of each individual ingredient. He will not think to put into use things that are unknown, vain, and which do not exist in the nature of things, or which occurred to him while dreaming or raving.

In the compositions of the ancients, if one thing should be lacking, he will substitute a replacement responding not merely in name and title, but in powers and efficacy This refers to the pharmaceutical practice of finding a "succedaneum"—a substitute that performs the same medical function even if it is a different species, adding it in the place of the missing one.

From these examples, it can be fully and abundantly clear how necessary the knowledge of plants and medical materials is to a physician; and how this argument we have treated is nothing foreign or alien to our profession or to the exercise of the art in which we are engaged; since among plants, flowers do not hold the last place;